Spat out into the world once again; a new city to explore, a new culture to taste, a new language we can’t speak. There’s a mountain of history pouring down on us in Ho Chi Minh, the southern capital of Vietnam but for now the long stories of Vietnam and its place in the region […]
The ancient city of Angkor could have a top ten all of its own such is its scale and grandeur. But that would be selling Cambodia short. Throughout this trip Cambodia has continued to surprise and refuse to be pegged into a preconception. So much of our adventure was teleported away to a different time, […]
Just another country? Not at all, yes a smaller country geographically but it has so much of past glory and present challenges. The past and present are immense weights but the future looks, to us, very positive. PAST (The former greatest civilisation in the world): PRESENT (A nation rising from significant challenges): […]
A good place to visit; such a common expression said so flippantly about so many places but what do we really mean when we say that? Maybe it’s when places are all the things we want them to be, the exact environment we chase; maybe it’s when it’s the opposite, a new experience to give […]
Beggars. Every travellers nightmare, the doorway to an awkward world where no response is appropriate and no emotional resolution comfortable, so rarely are our intellects and our hearts torn in such opposing directions. No matter how succinctly we rationalise a give-or-not-give flowchart in our minds, feelings of guilt, unjust opportunity, empathy and even some outrage […]
There’s a story I have, a story of the earlier and formative years of my life, before an adulthood which permitted no romance placed a full stop at the end and closed the book. Charlie has a similar story, albeit shorter, the story embedded in Australian history long before it was called history. It’s the […]
The time travel machine that is Cambodia continues it’s jarring shifts between eras and the varying faces of this little country that continue to surprise. From the 12th century in Angkor to the late 20th in Phnom Penh, Cambodia has so much history unobscured, placed in such bold light that seeing a Cambodia today isn’t […]
Upon entering Cambodia we reflected on the 1980 song ‘Holiday in Cambodia’, released just after the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge crumbled it was a concise lash out at the whining comfortable middle classes. Instead of complaining about trivial problems that aren’t really problems at all, the song so elegantly said: what you need, […]
Yesterday was yesterday; gone, faded into the vague crossover of night and never to glimpse daylight again. But some days don’t surrender meekly, resign to be remembered as a watermarked number in a small square along with the 364 others. Yesterday the dividing line of a calendar day was bridged by stubborn thoughts; we saw […]
Back to school, the words that every kid hates to hear but it’s back to school for us today at S-21 in Phnom Penh. It’s not strictly a school any more; education facility is a more apt description as rust streaks stain the bare concrete facades of the three storey school blocks of functional architecture […]
Charlie and Steve's Excellent Adventure 